Author: everymatt

I am now preparing, preemptively, to be called both a misogynist and a prude. Both of which don’t bother me anymore, since I’m also getting older and have generally decided that I don’t give a rip what people THINK of me – only what I think of myself in the eyes of God and what my wife and family think of me.

But here goes:

Liberals are ridiculously immature about sex, and I’ve about had it listening to their whining. I am now going to give them a stern, albeit brief, lecture.

Guys – sex? You’re doing it wrong. Completely wrong. Stop doing it wrong before you make yourselves miserable and the rest of us with you since we have to listen to your crap.

Sex is a beautiful, miraculous thing. Everyone should be having lots of it if it’s done in the way that makes it miraculous. The world would be a better place if everyone was in the proper relationship context for sex at least once a day, if not more. We should all be trying to have as much sex as possible. With our spouses! Yes, really, you liberal children, I’m going to go there. For your own good.

The reason that Christians preach about the importance of waiting til marriage before you have sex are numerous, backed by strong statistical and scientific evidence, and completely ignored by the left. A quick summary – do some research on these bullet points if you want the facts behind them, I frankly don’t have the time to hold your hands while you discover what an idiot you are about sex.

People in long-term, committed relationships do have less sex, but are considerably more satisfied with sex than others.

Sex, done right, is about trust and intimacy. You clumsy fools with your hook-up culture and six-month “relationships” based on nothing more than immediate pleasure seeking have no idea how much more meaningful a sexual experience is when you are committed to that other person…when the sex act is an expression of your willingness to give love, to reach for God through your union. There’s a reason young, single women are so dissatisfied with sex as a group these days.

Sex carries the awesome power of creation. Not being open to this – blocking this power – robs the sex act of significance and makes it cheap and (pardon the phrase) anti-climactic. One study found that women were less likely to have an orgasm during sex when their male partner wore a condom. It is also well known that conception is more likely when the woman has an orgasm. And that men dislike using condoms for a reason (and no, I’m not excusing the guy who knocks a girl up because he doesn’t want to lose feeling during sex and then doesn’t take responsibility – that would ALSO be doing it wrong. I’m saying, guys and gals, that sex is not intimate and satisfying without a full bodily union.

If you’re going to run around breaking things and making a mess, it is reasonable for us to expect you to pay for the consequences. Why is it “blocking access” to contraception to require you to pay for it yourself? Are grocery stores “blocking access” to food? Are car dealers “blocking access” to that new Fusion Hybrid because they cost money? Stop being so damned spoiled, kids. You want to screw around and “have fun” – you pay for the damned condoms and birth control pills. They aren’t even that damned expensive.

And of course…for those of you who think that abortions should be on demand, no consequences, no questions asked…sorry, but science is clear that the zygote is alive from the moment of implantation at the very latest. If you won’t be grown up enough to admit that abortion is killing a life, how do you expect us to have a dialogue. Now it’s all about “whether the mother feels like she’s actually a mother.” Boy…if we used that standard for murder in the adult world, things would get UGLY. Do you FEEL like what you do was wrong, Mr. Dahmer? Get real…grow up…and form your beliefs around what is patently obviously true, not what you want to be true to make yourselves feel better. If you want to argue that abortion is killing a life, but it should be OK anyway because (insert arguments here)….that at least would be intellectually honest and mature. You’d lose horribly and you know it…but at least I could look at you without wanting to build a rocket to Mars and start the human race over again.

The left is currently having a temper tantrum over Hobby Lobby…I’m old enough now not to be surprised by this. But damn it kids, get off my lawn or shut up! The facts are not on your side…and nor are the grown ups. A NARAL exec, today, suggested that women should go have public sex in Hobby Lobby stores as a means of protesting. I can’t even count the number of ways that this is misogynist and logically stupid. But let’s list the top three.

I’m sure that women who work for Hobby Lobby have plenty of sex. I’m sure that Hobby Lobby doesn’t care how much its employees have sex. Nothing about the family’s position on the issue is denying access to sex. You can live without the store paying for your morning-after pills and still screw around like a drunken sorority sister. You’re protesting something that has nothing to do with having sex…by having sex??

Let’s put female sexuality on display so that men will respect us as equals? Huh??? Yes…objectifying women is SO EMPOWERING.

How many arrests before that NARAL exec realizes that all this does is harden Hobby Lobby’s opinion about your position on this issue? What message do you suppose it sends to Hobby Lobby? That people on your side are rational, thinking folks with a reasonable opinion? Or that you’re friggin’ INSANE?

*sigh*

I’m tired now…go your rooms. And try not to have risky sex for a while.

EDIT TO ADD:

If you want some confirmation on my claims above regarding Christian sexual teaching – stop reading that sick freak Kinsey and start reading Andrew Greeley. Hit tip to John Konsecsni once again for the quick-hitter reference idea. 🙂

EDIT TO CORRECT a misuse of the term fetus.

Technically, it is a fetus the moment it implants…but a zygote before the implantation. Both stages are considered “alive” scientifically…there is some disagreement as to whether cell division is advanced enough prior to implantation to say that the process has fully begun.

In short, I posted my frustration with liberal idiocy regarding the SCOUTS’ Hobby Lobby decision on Facebook after reading the insane overreaction of my friends on my wall and attracted the attention of John, who writes for the American Journal.

Cool!

He says it better than I did in my brief rebuke, but keeps some of the same language I used…cool again!

This post is going to be relatively simple despite the significant research that went into creating it. I am going to show you two images of the Eurasian/North African realms – one from 2008, as George W. Bush’s presidency was coming to an end and one from today as the 2014 midterm elections begin to loom on the horizon.

On each image, I have color coded each nation according to its diplomatic, political and social affiliation with the United States (and more broadly, with the concept of liberty).

Five classifications are present in each map, and they are:

Enemy – A state which is actively engaged in the mission of undermining the United States through diplomatic, financial or military channels or by forging alliances with other existing enemy combatants or by making war against its own people or against civil liberties on a scale large enough to be a global outrage and a particular affront to the goals of the United States.

Leans Enemy – A state which is indirectly engaged in efforts to undermine the United States as outlined above, but refrains from actively attacking American interests or maintains even the slightest (productive) diplomatic relationship with the United States.

Unaffiliated – A country with no ties to American interests or a muddled relationship with the U.S.

Leans Friendly – Maintains a positive working relationship with the U.S. economically, diplomatically or in joint military ventures through the international community, but is not widely considered a significant U.S. ally.

Ally – A nation which is unquestionably an ally of the United States through treaty, international military cooperation, deep economic partnerships and common civic goals.

I will admit, upfront, that there is an element of subjectivity in the placement of each nation at any given time and that in some cases, an argument could be made for a different placement. I am stating this in advance because I expect viewers of this post to approach the analysis with the same realization (that how they’d characterize the situation is also subjective in some sense).

Now – the images. First from the end of the Bush years:

Now from the sixth year of Obama’s term in office:

The differences here really aren’t all that subtle, but I’ll outline each change I made with a note on why I made the change and leave it up to the reader to decide if I have the analysis right on the whole. From west to east, those changes are:

Morocco – Ally to Leans Friendly

Morocco remains one of the most westernized of nations in Africa and maintains strong diplomatic ties with the E.U. and the U.S. – however, during the Arab Spring and on several occasions since, this country has been rocked by bouts of protests, terror attacks and general unrest as the population becomes increasingly radical with time.

Algeria – Unaffiliated to Leans Enemy

Algeria was never a particularly stable regime, but now serves as a refuge for Islamic extremists who go border-hopping to evade capture and boasts and government interested in forging ties with Egypt (once a good sign…now, not so much)

Bosnia and Herzegovina – Leans Enemy to Unaffiliated

Scars from Clinton’s largest military engagement remain, but Bosnia is in the process of normalizing its diplomatic relations with the west.

Tunisia – Leans Enemy to Enemy

Tunisia was the second nation to experience a popular uprising during the Arab Spring. A population that has always leaned toward radical or conservative Islam has become a place where violence and anti-American sentiments run rampant. Just a few weeks back, a spree of Christian lynchings broke out in Tunisia, with apparent government support.

Libya – Unaffiliated to Enemy

The US.’s relationship with Gaddafi was never easy – the man was nutters after all. But in exchange for his personal comfort and prestige within the international community, he was cooperative with U.S. and E.U. interests. Hardly an ally, but certainly not an enemy, Gaddafi’s deposition in Libya and subsequent death turned the nation over to Al Qaeda affiliated groups, culminating in the incident in Benghazi along with bombings of several other western embassies.

Chad – Unaffiliated to Leans Enemy

You don’t hear too much about Chad in the news, but it has moved into the red due to a rise in terrorist attacks in recent years and a lack of any significant response from its governing authorities.

Ukraine – Leans Friendly to Leans Enemy

Significantly, as Bush was on his way out, he promised fringe nations in Eastern Europe a missile defense system. Obama promptly ended those plans. In the years since, Russia has become increasingly aggressive here, ending in the attack on the Crimean Peninsula. This, by itself, wouldn’t land The Ukraine in the enemy camp, but the nation is getting zero support from the U.S. or the E.U. (the U.S. because Obama doesn’t want to get bogged down in any new military conflicts, the E.U. because many of its member states depend on Russian oil exports), and is now forced to accept Russian intervention. Their government may not WISH to be a Russian puppet state, but that is where they are.

Turkey – Leans Friendly to Leans Enemy

Much has been said in the press regarding Turkey’s alarming tilt toward Islamic extremism. In fact, their legislature is now majority Sharia, if not in official affiliation, then in deed. There remains hope of functional ties with Turkey, but they should be viewed with extreme skepticism.

Egypt – Leans Friendly to Leans Enemy

Egypt played a key role in joint military operations against Saddam Hussein and has long helped broker lasting treaties in the region, even with Israel. But the Arab Spring turned the nation over the Muslim Brotherhood (who claimed to be a moderate Muslim organization but whose stated goals included the destruction of Israel and the institution of Sharia Law)…the people rose up against the Brotherhood (mostly because they proved to be completely ineffectual at governing and the Egyptian economy cratered), and the nation is now ruled by the military (at least for now). Still, all signs point to a nation headed for either chaotic anarchy or Islamic rule.

Sudan – Leans Enemy to Enemy

The Sudanese have always had a penchant for acts of aggression against the west through embassy attacks, the harboring of terrorists, etc, but now their government has gone to all out war against Christianity.

South Sudan – Leans Enemy to Enemy

See above

Kenya – Leans Friendly to Unaffiliated

Here, too, the local population has turned more and more fervently toward radical Islam – though Kenya has yet to be directly involved in anything U.S. related.

Somalia – Leans Enemy to Enemy

Somali control of the Gulf of Aden has always been a bit dicey in recent years, but they’ve taken to attempts at halting western trade through the Red Sea and support inhumane attacks on trade in with the west.

Ethiopia – Leans Enemy to Enemy

Ethiopia has long been a country on the edge of self-destruction, with three tribal ethnic groups shoehorned into one border. But, of late, this has become an even more brutal place to live, particularly for anyone not affiliated with their ruling class.

Eritrea – Leans Friendly to Leans Enemy

The U.S. has held significant military positions here for decades, but that will soon be at an end if the Eritrean people have anything to say about it. Recent reports of significant anti-western anti-Christian, anti-military protests and terror attacks have turned this strip of Red Sea coastline into a minor war zone.

Yemen – Unaffiliated to Leans Enemy

Oman – Unaffiliated to Leans Enemy

Both Yemen and Oman leaned much more heavily on Saudi Arabia for economic relations and border security as the entire region has destabilized. Neither nation is outwardly aggressive toward the U.S. or the West, but as Saudi Arabia has trended further and further toward an alliance with Iran, so too have its neighbor states.

United Arab Emirates – Leans Friendly to Unaffiliated

Here too, the U.S. used to routinely partner with the U.A.E. militarily (they allowed us to launch our attacks on Iraq from their soil, as did Qatar, for example), but lately, the U.A.E. has been naking noises about expelling our forces and stepping up diplomatic relations with the Saudis.

Qatar – Leans Friendly to Unaffiliated

In Qatar’s case, their still speak of productive relations with the U.S., but internally, they are becoming a refuge for international criminals and terrorists. This one bears watching.

Saudi Arabia – Leans Enemy to Enemy

Although the Saudis still maintain important business connections with the U.S., there can be no doubt that they have become much bolder in their opposition to Israel, to the U.S. and the west. Not only have they been emboldened by our general withdrawal from the region – they have actively sought dialogue with Iran – a known combatant.

Jordan – Unaffiliated to Leans Enemy

Jordan has previously been somewhat helpful in defending Israel from the advancing cause of Palestinian militants. However, the country has recently backed Palestinian independence without conditions (the Israelis wish to be granted the same recognition that they would give the Palestinians – a reasonable request that Jordan does not favor). On top of this, they’ve become involved in dealings with overflowing Syrian rebels and have been less than helpful in international manhunts for terrorist criminals evading capture.

Lebanon – Leans Friendly to Leans Enemy

This is a very sad story…Lebanon is in an unfortunate position geographically, and cannot really defend its own borders – they are becoming a war-torn victim of geographic proximity.

Palestine – Nonexistent to Enemy

The U.N. voted to recognize Palestine as an independent state – a development that heavily complicates peace negotiations with Israel. Notably, Obama spoke out in favor of this.

Iraq – Leans Enemy to Enemy

We’re all aware of the recent collapse of the Iraqi army, the intervention of the Iranian military in the conquest of ISIS, and the renewed military aggression from the U.S. in response. Clearly, Iraq is behind enemy lines at this point.

Azerbaijan – Leans Friendly to Unaffiliated

Armenia – Leans Friendly to Unaffiliated

Both Azerbaijan and Armenia sit in a rather precarious, narrow strip of land between Turkey (and its increasingly radical population) and the Caspian Sean (and other potential U.S. foes to the east and south). They have, understandably, gotten nervous about showing support for the west.

Afghanistan – Leans Enemy to Enemy (in progress)

I’m cheating a little bit on this one. Obama is using the same exit strategy that he used in Iraq and a similar progression of ever-increasing violence has already begun in Afghanistan as the Taliban – once on the run – masses its forces from the western border with Iran and prepares to retake the country once we’re gone. The government of Afghanistan is understandably annoyed with us over this pending disaster.

Pakistan – Unaffiliated to Leans Enemy

Meanwhile, Pakistan has drifted away from obligations with the U.S. on the economic and diplomatic fronts and stepped up development of its nuclear program (including a few unauthorized tests to intimidate its Indian neighbors).

Tajikistan – Unaffiliated to Leans Enemy

Kyrgyzstan – Unaffiliated to Leans Enemy

And in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, Islamic extremists are gaining a foothold in local governments and street-level violence is on the rise.

Burma – Leans Friendly to Unaffiliated

This is more of an economic ding – the Burmese have entered into a number of trade agreements with the Chinese to accept currency other than the USD – a development that threatens U.S. interests.

Taiwan – Leans Friendly to Leans Enemy

And, here’s an unfortunate bit of news – Taiwan has recently beenn usurped by a military coup supported by the people – likely as a result of increasing aggression by the Chinese in the South China Sea.

Honorable mention: Russia – I nearly moved them into the enemies camp, but held back for now, noting that we still have significant diplomatic contact with Putin…he is certainly a major threat, but I’ll wait a bit before declaring him an enemy combatant.

WOW! These maps look like the expanding hot zone from “Outbreak” (remember that scene where they projected how the outbreak would spread?) – I don’t claim that Obama is the only person responsible for this. In fact, a good argument can be made that some of this shifting was a long time coming and that the end of the overarching influence of WWII era land grants to various allied territories (and the subsequent power of the Arab Kings) was bound to yield a turn toward chaos, at least for a time as a power void opened up. BUT…apologists for the Obama Administration cannot possibly look at the situation today and claim that they had a positive influence in any way. And frankly, these maps tell a story for which Obama must bear some responsibility.

I’d love to do the same kind of analysis for the beginning and end of Reagan’s presidency. 🙂

For those of you just joining us, the 2014 election season has been marked by a never-ending string of “tea party is dead” reports. For those of you just joining us, Eric Cantor is one of the biggest movers and shakers in the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives – on several high profile committees, including the House Ways and Means and Ethics committees.

Brat – a relative nobody whose main claim to fame prior to this election was that he had no interest in politics – decided out of frustration with Cantor’s grandstanding and salesmanship in DC to run this year, never expecting he had a chance to win the primary. His campaign seemed more a catharsis – a chance to bring to the public eye the shocking lack of ethics inside the beltway.. But today, he is victorious and the mational media is desperate for answers as to how on Earth this happened.

Brat is a Catholic with a history of religious study and a career as an economist. Sounds like an interesting mix to me, along with his bracing honesty.

I am just going to forward this along with my strongest recommendation to anyone who takes seriously their commitment to an informed understanding of American Conservatism as it currently stands and as it SHOULD stand going forward.

This is a collection of well-considered essays by young, energetic conservative scholars, each of which advances a middle-class-oriented, conservative political agenda based on constitutional conservatism with a bit of a populist bent.

So much to love in this…I can’t even describe it after first reading…but trust me…do yourself a favor and spend some time reading it.

Here, in the shortest bulleted list possible, is the leftist formula for handling a scandal. As one of our conservative blogger friends recently pointed out, this is hardly a new formula – it kept Nicholas II in power for far too long even though he had the intellectual maturity of a dog and the cunning of a mosquito, and it allowed Stalin to maintain a positive image well into the 50s…well beyond the beginning of the gulags and the mass graves and the reallocations.

STEP 1: Scandal? What are you talking about?

STEP 2: Well this is appalling! I just heard about it reading the paper and am as shocked and angry as you!

STEP 3: How dare my opponents get mad about this – they have never liked me and are eager to play politics with this admittedly unfortunate error (see…he went from outraged to oh it’s an unfortunate error)

STEP 4: The real scandal is the politics of the right! (try to deflect anger to a scapegoat your supporters already don’t like)

STEP 5: **stonewall investigations for a year at least…refuse to discuss with reporters, who quickly lose interest when nothing new happens**

STEP 6: What? Why are we even still talking about this…it’s old news and it wasn’t a big deal anyway! (minimize and give your supporters license to ignore the “error”)

STEP 7: Look…the debate about this is OVER…we won that argument…now you’re just talking sour grapes, you ingrate! (dismiss even TALKING about the scandal as radical)

STEP 8: Fire non-significant employee or two, perhaps, or send people away on administrative leave and reassign them. Claim this has nothing to do with the scandal itself, but let the press scapegoat this person.

STEP 9: Scandal? What are you talking about? Never happened. All those things that happened had nothing to do with us. (deny and start again)

Obama, in his time in office has had ELEVEN major scandals break…scandals larger than the one that felled Warren G. Harding. Some larger than the one that felled Richard Nixon and Spiro T. Agnew.

The teapot dome scandal was about land use rights and cronyism in an era when liberals despised crony capitalists and conservatives despised crony unionism. So it was a minor issue really…but a well-timed minor issue.

Watergate undermined the American electorate’s confidence in the election process at a time when democracy seemed under attack by the forces of extremism (high profile assassinations abound). But Nixon killed no one and there’s no evidence that the information he gathered illegally changed anything of substance to the 1972 election or the policy discussions of the day. It was more about what it said about Nixon as a person, I suspect.

But here…let’s bullet point the scandals of the Obama years:

IRS, under direction from top-level DC lawyers supervising their conduct, targets enemies of the President for unfair scrutiny and attempts to alter electoral outcomes.

NSA, under direction from fellow Democrats in the Senate Security Committee (albeit with bipartisan support), spies on every phone e, email account, and media outlet without oversight.

VA literally murders dozens, perhaps hundreds of elderly veterans (!) by forcing them to wait years for medical care they were owed for their service and then lies about the wait times to gain career advancement perks.

National Parks authorities use a government shutdown to close open air public spaces never before closed and are heard saying they believe their job is to make the shutdown “hurt as much as possible.”

Affordable Care Act – passed in a back-channel Senate vote that broke Senate rules of procedure while House Majority Leader says we need to read it to know what’s in there – debuts with a catastrophic failure of management.

Fast and Furious gun running program, under the direction of top-level Justice Department officials, gets a US serviceman killed and results in the deaths of hundreds of innocent Mexicans.

Obama publicly threatens on multiple occasions to use the executive order to circumvent the legislative authority of congress (and does so ten times more often than any previous U.S. President ever has, issuing 62 executive orders in 6 years compared to 8 from Bush Jr. and no more than 4 by any other President)

Justice Department spies on media figures in an attempt to force them to reveal undisclosed sources without a warrant or probably cause.

GSA caught squandering billions of dollars on parties, “conferences” and other luxuries.

Obama trades five of the worst war criminals held in Guantanamo Bay for a deserter and Taliban sympathizer and publicly states that he did this in the hopes that it would engender confidence in future negotiations between the U.S. and the Taliban (NOT the people actually ruling Afghanistan…the guys we put into power in the first place because the Taliban was so dangerous and corrupt)…and does this without the approval of the UN, the Afghan government, his own Cabinet or the Senate Security Committee.

FCC threatens news networks that it will audit their content for “fairness” and attempts to regulate the speed and price of the internet.

And of course…Obama’s senior State Dept. officials claim an obvious terrorist attack 9/11/12 in Benghazi that resulted in the deaths of four US Citizens…was a spontaneous demonstration gone bad in response to some little-viewewd YouTube video…and then covered up evidence that they knew this “misstatement of facts” to be a lie when the story was first concocted.

WOW!!!

That this guy’s approval rating is 42% to 44% says more about his propaganda tactics and his handling of scandals (with media compliance, incredibly) than about any individual policy objective.

The danger of declaring that the debate is over…encapsulated by 6 years of constant scandal and lawbreaking by our most powerful official and his various appointed cronies.

Stop saying the warning signs were missed. They were not missed. The Rodger family was begging, pleading for help from therapists, the police; just as did my own family, my mother, my sister, Sally, my cousins, nephews and I intervened our guts out to absolutely no avail. There is no system left in this country to deal with these traumas. This is a mental health issue and no more. We are surrounded by phony bleeding hearts who can coolly step over the sacred bodies of the wretchedly ill lying about our streets and sashay into a shop to eat a sandwich. Shame on all of you and may an huge share of the blame fall upon the shoulders of the perpetrators of this mercilessness, my sister, Kate Millett, and her fawning, ghoulish band of “liberating” acolytes. These people are the ones responsible for this chaos in our world.

Looking for a social injustice to rage against? Try this on for size. It is tragic – and unconscionable – that so many of our mentally ill are left to languish on our streets. Only a small percentage of these will go on to commit violent crimes, true, but even the benign schizophrenic deserves more than to live life in a pee-soaked gutter.

Conservatives do care about poverty. We have a whole color-coded portfolio of good ideas for how to tackle it. But if the public is disinclined to believe this, that may sometimes be our own fault.

Conservatives love freedom, personal responsibility and spirited individualism. Those are wonderful (and very American) values that we are right to cherish. But we could perhaps be more discerning at times about choosing our talking points.

Yes. The right’s economic arguments, even if they’re 100% correct, are overly-technical and distant from the lives of many ordinary Americans. If we want to bring people to our side, we need to meet them where they are and present solutions to their problems that will strike them as both viable and compassionate. What’s more, we need to be more aggressive in assigning blame where it’s actually due. Why are so many inner city neighborhoods dysfunctional? That’s not the fault of the right; the right hasn’t had political control in the inner cities for decades. And if there’s any truth to the perception that people of color are not equally respected in the academy, might the animating assumptions behind affirmative action be the key contributing factor?

I do think we could do better when it comes to things like race and gender relations — even if I don’t agree with the left’s proposed fascistic “solutions.” What if we took concepts like “privilege” and “social justice” — and then cleverly turned them on their heads? What if we acknowledged the problems highlighted by the left — but then vigorously challenged the left’s explanations for their existence? Would we be more successful? I welcome your thoughts below!

Of course, I didn’t actually need a study in England to tell me that what I’m seeing of young people today is a bad thing. I have been watching the changes even in college kids today…their attention spans are disappearing (and I thought I was bad!).

But evidently…it’s more than just attention, focus, and ambition that are disappearing behind a firewall of Facebook addiction and time-wasting games.

There has been a misguided move, lately, to use these things as educational devices in schools and at home…to park kids in front of these tablets and “teach” through games. Parents cheer as their child learns the skills that they believe will be necessary in the new world order…like how to do Apple’s range of finger manipulations to get a response from an iPad.

But…at the same time, their kids are losing the ability to do the simplest things with real world objects.